Racing Categories - suggestions for alterntives

The purpose of categories must be to create a fair and even race for the riders in any given event.

Even though the new Cat enforcement system certianly is a step in the right directions, it still has a tendency to be pushing riders into higher Categoires mainly based on their longer efforts, even though the 4-6 min power (zMax) is now also being considered.
But in fact most races are actually won by riders with high power values for the ultra short durations eg. 15 sec / 1 min power. this is not addressed at all with the Cat enforcement based categories.

Here is a suggetion for alterntive Racing Categories, which could be purely based on race ranking instead. Eg.split into 8 classes, Riders could be allowed to race in the category which the riders race ranking suggest and 1 category up.something like :

A+: Top 1.000 riders
A : Top 2.000 riders
B+: Top 5.000 riders
B : Top 10.000 riders
C+: Top 20.000 riders
C : Top 50.000 riders
D+: Top 100.000 riders
D : all others

Another suggestion could be to base categories on historical (eg 60 days) normalised power NP instead, pretty much excactly what FRR (Flame Rouge Racing) as race organizer have done to put riders into fair and even categories for their races. FRR´s approach to make racing categories is IMO much better than both the old 20 min based categories and new Cat. enforcment race rankings.

RIDE ON :slight_smile:

Cat enforcement does the opposite and tends to push people down categories as the limits are higher.

This is idea was just brought up on fb so i checked my own team which i was slightly surprised the gap was not wider but from mine 11 riders got upgraded and 23 downgraded compared to previous zp cats.

Fixed categories are never the answer for anything, Zwift are working on a ranking system and there is already the likes of zwiftracing.app which organisers can use various metrics or historical max values to organise pens. Adding more and more races all the time with the likes of the dirt team series coming up soon you should try them out. plenty discussion on their discord ZwiftRacing.app

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Well I actually went up a cat due to cat enforcment… But what I meant was actually not that the cat enforcement sends more people up, but rather that the parameter for deciding which cat one ends up in, is still primarily determined on the longer efforts… But it is really great to hear that they are working on a ranking based system instead. I for sure will look forward to see that in action if they hopefully decide to implement such system.

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